​Blog!Strike! News and Gaming Thoughts﻿﻿

Hey friends, here's the latest version of the playtest material for the upcoming expansion book. Please play it, give me feedback (my email address is in the pdf) and feel free to share it with other Strike! fans. There are now 12 Classes and 1 Role to try, each with a number of options, so we need as much playtesting as we can get. So go get your friends together and run a game and be part of making Strike! the best it can be.

In other news, I've been thinking of starting a personal blog and I figure that a lot of what I post will be Strike! related or at least gaming related, but not all of it, so I figure that this is as good a place as any to post. Being able to post thoughts and ideas instead of just news will allow me to update this space a lot more often (I've already got a couple of ideas typed up and ready to go). If you're really only here to find out what Strike! stuff has been coming out and don't want to see anything else, everything directly related to publishing Strike! will be tagged "news" and you can just sort by that category (or use this link: http://www.strikerpg.com/blog/category/news).

Like the title says, the latest mini-expansion is up on Drivethru. I really like how it turned out, and I think that you'll find a lot of good steal-able ideas even if you're playing in a game where travel and survival are not a focus. And if you are playing a game where travel and survival are a focus, this expansion is exactly what you need. And if you're not playing at all right now, get this expansion, get your friends together, and play an around-the-world adventure or play as pioneers on a monster-infested Oregon Trail.

​It's been more than a couple of weeks, but I'm finished writing the Survival mini-expansion. I'm just going to do some editing, whip up a cover, and make a PDF, so that'll be out soon.

The other (bigger?) news is that we've got a whole bunch of classes and even a new Role ready for playtesting for an upcoming expansion book. If you're willing to get a few friends together and test out the new stuff, drop me an email and I'll send you the material.

Even cooler, a fan has made an online character generator! It has really come together nicely so far, and it's still being worked on to improve the experience, so go check it out and make some characters!

Hey, I haven’t updated in a while, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is going on with Strike! Well, to be honest, nothing was going on in April - I was incredibly busy with my “real” jobs, and I did zero work on Strike! However, May and June have been a different story. I’m working on a major project. Two major projects, really: a “Player options” book with new classes, roles, and a whole lot of items and equipment, and a book of pre-written monsters. I’ve already written about eighty monsters. I’ve got beta versions of five new classes, and Gabriel Butche, who wrote The Psion has written beta versions of four new classes and a new Role.

In the overlap between writing items and writing monsters, I’ll also be writing rules for a campaign set in a world where you hunt monsters and use their body parts to craft items.​And there’s more! I’m nearing completion on the next mini-expansion: Strike! Survival. I didn’t think I’d be writing another mini-expansion while I worked on these projects, but I’ve been thinking about this one for months and I finally had the insights I needed to make it happen. Strike! Survival will deal with man vs nature conflicts like you see in stories like The Martian, Seveneves, The Perfect Storm, Touching the Void, The Way Back, etc. If you want to run a campaign of exploration and pioneering on the Oregon Trail or a fantasy/sci-fi equivalent, this is the supplement you need. If you want to spice up travel scenes with real stakes and avoid the pitfalls that can make travel in RPGs boring, this is the supplement you need. Along with ideas for dangers and resources in several harsh environments, there are also rules for telling “A Harrowing Tale of Survival” In A Harrowing Tale of Survival, when a player character is lost and left for dead, they do not perish, but instead return, losing everything, but living to tell the tale. Check back in two weeks and I'll hopefully have it up for sale.

The Rogue is up! The Rogue is a new play experience built around the ideas of mobility and advantage in combat. Using move actions to set up powerful attacks, this class is perfect for anyone who wants to outmaneuver their foes. The Rogue has the best support of any class for stealthy play, so if stealth is what you're after, this class is a must. Not all Rogues are sneaky, though: you can also create highly mobile attackers who don't use stealth but have other means of generating advantage for themselves and others during combat.

I am happy to announce that the first expansion Class published for Strike! is not the upcoming Rogue, but is, in fact, The Psion. The Psion was written by Gabriel Butche, who has been playing Strike! since the days when it was still named Sacred BBQ. He writes:

The Psion is a Class focused around one of the more esoteric mechanics in Strike!, interrupts and reactions. On her turn the Psion may use one of several powers to prime her psionic abilities, giving her access to a menagerie of powers usable between now and her next turn - things like responding to enemy attacks with healing for teammates, grabbing foes who try to slink away, and even increasing the potency of zones as they're laid down! She also has access to several different class features which include making her and her teammates able to act with more bravado, swapping role boosts around the party, and of course, bending enemy's minds to your whims.

My opinion? The Psion is a very cool idea for a class that plays totally differently than the existing classes. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

If you are an aspiring designer and have any interest in making content for Strike!, it's simple! Just email me and give me a heads up and I can give you the thumbs up, send you templates and stuff to help you make the formatting look good, and if I like what you're making, I'll help promote your work here and on the various forums and media I frequent.

A woman found murdered? Barely news in a city of millions. A woman found murdered, shot dead with a gun that cannot be fired, laid out amid profane symbols painted in her own blood? You'll need to work fast to make sure this murder doesn't make the news at all, and faster to figure out whodunit, because you're pretty sure you don't want to see what happens if the killers finish what they've started...

If you want to get that adventure and the Strike! Vehicles mini-expansion for free, you can pledge to my Patreon to subscribe to all the new Strike! content I'm producing. For a limited time, any new patrons will get the first two mini-expansions free of charge! There has never been a better time to sign up. The next expansion coming up is a great one: the Rogue, a full new class. You have three options as a Rogue: the Poisoner whose toxins can quickly render enemies useless, the Brawler whose tricks make enemies give up advantage to you and your allies, or the Backstabber whose devastating attacks can hit enemies for massive damage.

Even if you already have the first expansions, I would love it if you would pledge to my Patreon - it's the best way to show your support for my work in making Strike! ever better. And if you're not a fan of Patreon, you can always buy the expansions individually.

If you are looking for a place to discuss Strike! with other fans, we now have a Google+ community set up. People are already sharing cool content there, so check it out and join in the fun!

The guide to making macros on Roll20.net is up on the Downloads page, written by Gabriel Butche. Roll20.net is a fantastic way to play Strike! online, making it easy to grab a pre-made map to use or to use the drawing tools to hastily improvise one for an unplanned combat. Macros make it even smoother and easier to use.